n the article, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner, the author’s purpose is revealed through judgemental and magical word choice.…
I could only imagine how Horace Miner felt when entering the Nacirema village. At first glance he must have had culture shock when learning about the daily mouth cleansing and the temples where some enter and never return. I came to realize that western cultures share many of the same daily rituals just like the Nacirema. This non-material culture has many reglionist beliefs such has the use of witch doctors, medicine men, shrines and oddly enough the Nacirema woman bake their heads in oven. In evaluating the culture of the Nacirema we can break down each of the beliefs and compare them to…
In the article Body Ritual Among The Nacirema by Horace Miner, he makes fun of people’s weaknesses, mistakes, foolishness, and wrong behavior. He uses confusing vocabulary words to make it hard for use to know who the article is talking about. Miner refers Nacirema as to America. He wanted to make Nacirema seem magical and silly by describing them as born with behaviors. Miner also, believes that Nacierma do bizarra thing because he does not understand the meaning behind their behavior. One of the behavior is the belief in the ugliness of human body. In society, we are told what is pretty from what is ugly. This is determined by models, hairdressers, barber shop, spa, and infomercial. As a society, we have the power to decided what is right…
When I read Body Rituals Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner the first time, I couldn’t imagine how a culture could behave this way and live their daily lives following these rituals. They believed that their bodies were ugly and its natural tendency was to debility and disease. They devoted much of their time trying to prevent these characteristics…
In this paper I discuss what point Horace Miner was trying to make is his paper titled "Body Ritual among the Nacirema". Horace’s paper is about America but in the perspective that America is a tribe of third world country or such. I go through the individual topics, which mostly make fun of American’s vanity, and I describe what he is really talking about. I try to summaries Horace’s paper and put it in “American” terms.…
The Nacirema are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawark of the Antilles. Little is known about their origin but people believe that they came from the east. These people concentrate on the human body, which is their main concern which makes the Nacirema unique in their rituals and ways of thinking. The Nacirema believe that the human body is ugly in the sense that it’s not perfect because it’s weak and prone to catch diseases. They believe that the only way to rid of these characteristics is through rituals and ceremonies.…
After reading the article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, I can’t help but notice blatantly obvious similarities between our culture and theirs. Their rituals, rites, and customs are bizarre in nature and seem to illustrate a nearly obsessive fascination with the human body. The main focus of their culture appears to be shaming people based on their appearance and forcing them to conform to the societal norms. Upon further reading, I noted that while the Nacirema put a high value on the upkeep of their bodies, they made it exorbitantly expensive to do so, even if a tribe member was dying of sickness and the supplies, or “potions”, were readily available to cure him/her. This seemed backwards. There are some aspects of the Nacirema culture…
The most interesting topic that was covered this quarter was in Week 2, Chapter 2: Culture and Society. This was also when the class read the article Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner. This whole week was so intriguing and diverse, one in particular term made a large impression on me, and this was “rituals” as explained by Barken (p. 36) This term and act initially brought a sense of familiarity among all cultures, ethnicity groups, and societies, because each one of us performs a ritual daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. These may vary from extreme acts, or conform to the social normality of going to the dentist every six months for a checkup. The mutual properties of this term is what I found to be the most interesting. From…
Horace Miner was attempting to illustrate a civilization that is similar to ours, who become victims of their culture. In this article I could see how rituals and beliefs could destroy a civilization. The Nacirema did unthinkable things to each other and to themselves they showed us how we can be our greatest and worst critic. Americans try to change themselves to meet a certain standard that we have created. We are not confident in who we are, so we start picking at the flaws we see in ourselves, that we think others see as well. Mr. Miner pointed out that there were certain rituals that could make you lose or gain weight; they also have some that are to enhance a woman’s bodily features. Today some of those “rituals” would be considered normal…
The analysis of the article Body Ritual Among the Nacerima by Horace Minor uses key principles to help decipher the hidden meanings behind his work. The article is based off of Americans but written in a primitive manner to help show readers the importance of keeping an open mind. Cultural relativism is crucial when researching a new topic. This culture is different than others based on their obsession with physical appearance but it does not make them wrong. Also, the culture that practices different rituals has a different belief system. One culture may place great importance on preserving the land while…
Body Ritual among the Nacirema” tells the story of the “unusual aspect” lifestyle and the rituals of the Americans. Miner uses a unique approach to describe not Nacirema but the Americans by using an outsider's view, a person who does not understand American's lifestyle. Nacirema is American spelled backwards Miner writes about is every household having a “shrine room” and those individuals with more power contain more than one. He remarks that the shrines rituals ‘are not with family but are private”and the box or chest which contains “magical potions”. The “shrine room” Miner describes is the bathroom and the box with magical potions is the medicine cabinet. The most important potions are described to be obtained from the medicine man who writes it down on a piece of paper in an “ancient and secret language” then is taken to the herbalist. Miner is talking about the American culture the medicine men are doctors the ancient writing are the scribbles on the prescription forms that somehow the pharmacist can understand. This helps us (Americans) realize different things about our culture and see how others view our culture.…
“Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner discusses the ritual practice of Nacirema people, which is an ethnic group of people in America. In freshman year, I had a chance to take freshman seminar class about religion, so I know that even in one religion they have various way of ritual practice. The ritual practices are usually formed very early in the acient period of time, so most of them are unreasonable and superstitious. It is very interesting to read an article about the ritual practice of Nacirema people to understand more about a culture in the religious aspect. I was surprised to see that in every religion they usually have an image of God to worship, but Nacirema people does not. They worship to holy-mouth-man, medicine man,…
Many of the practices Miner mentions in the article aren’t really strange to the Nacirema culture. But an outsider views the practices as odd. For example, Miner mentions about a shrine box, which translate to a medicine cabinet being strange to the outsider. The charms and magical potions in the shrine box being the medicine needed cure the ills and maladies of an individual. Medicine had a purpose of curing those maladies for many with similar ills. But the outsider views pulling out these magical packets is not something done in their culture or rather not seen as necessary. These charms and magical potions are given to the people by the medicine men, or rather doctors, psychiatrists, and pharmacists. Another strange practice to the outsider is the belief in the…
In the story, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, by Horace Miner he talks about the Nacirema tribe and describes the body rituals that their society does on a regular basis that they view as the norm in their society and culture. While reading about these strange and unusual rituals, one can’t help but think that what these people are doing is totally and completely ridiculous. Ethnocentrism comes over and judgment takes place, but in reality some could view our American culture as just and crazy and strange.…
Hi there—my name is Ling. Since I experienced a misunderstanding of a patient’s cultural standard, I decided to do a little research on cultural norms and share what I found with my network during a recent meeting. Here’s what the group found most interesting:…